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THE ONLY TRUE 



AMERICAN SCHOOL 



SYSTEM 












ADDRESS 



Delivered before the Convention of Young 
Men's Catholic Societies, Philadelphia, 
September 24, 1901 . . . ... . 



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THE ONLY TRUE AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 

By the Rev. Thomas J. Campbell, S.J. 



AN enthusiastic but poorly inspired 
prophet in the West, has in- 
formed the world that the relig- 
ion of the future is not to be, as he puts 
it, a matter of godology but of manol- 
ogy. Apparently his theology is on a par 
with his philology, and doubtless he 
would be surprised to learn that the more 
even he knows of man, the more he will 
be compelled to know of God, for the 
image must always refer back to the 
original from which it is copied. " Let 
us make man after our own image and 
likeness," God said in the beginning, 
and whether it be in the intellect's in- 
finite avidity for truth, or the inviola- 
bility of the human will, or the imper- 
ishability of the human soul, that like- 
ness must remain to the end, and with 
it an intimate and eternal relationship 
between the Creator and creature. 
From that relationship obligations on 
the part of man ensue. That is religion ; 
and without it, man is simply unthink- 
able. 

What is true of individuals is true 
of nations. Religion is indispensable. 
"You may find," says Cicero, "cities 
without palaces, without towers and 
without walls, but never without a 
temple or without worship." Or as 
Bonaparte when building up his em- 
pire, paradoxically but emphatically, 
though somewhat blasphemously ex- 
pressed it: "If there were no God we 
should have to create him." 

Not only are all nations convinced 
of its necessity, but we have at least one 
example of a political power actually 
arrogating divine honors to itself, erect- 
ing tesnples for its cult and immolating 
hundreds of thousands of victims on its 
altars. Ave Roma immortalis was but 



the expression of a belief that the Em- 
pire had the immortality of God. 

In the modern dispensation, the relig- 
ion that is essential to the prosperity 
and existence of the State is Chris- 
tianity. History proves that beyond 
question. The Jews who rejected it 
saw Judah's sceptre broken and the 
once chosen people scattered as wan- 
derers over the world; it was persecuted 
by the Caesars and the great Empire 
crumbled to the dust; where it has been 
expelled, you have the barbarism of 
Mohammed devastating and degrading 
the fairest countries of the earth; Eu- 
rope owes its civilization to Christianity, 
and where it is in honor and associated 
with the State, you have, as a distin- 
guished Churchman lately pointed out, 
three of the strongest nations of to-day : 
England, Russia and Germany ; while 
those countries which once ruled the 
world in arms, as well in arts and letters, 
but whose governments have Wbeen 
seized by a set of freebooting infidels, 
anarchists and foes of Christianity, a^e 
now scoffed at by their enemies and 
taunted with being of the decadent and 
moribund Latin race. 

How does our own country stand in 
this matter ? Though there is not a 
word about Christianity in the Declara- 
tion of Independence, or the Constitu- 
tion, we are undoubtedly a Christian na- 
tion. The intense religiousness of the 
original Colonies, the opening of the Fed- 
eral and State Legislatures with prayer, 
the annual proclamation of a Day of 
Thanksgiving to God, and, just at this 
terrible moment through which we are 
passing, the touchingly pious death of 
the last President who fell under the bul- 
lets of the assassin, followed as the 



The Only True American School System. 



tragic event was by the deeply reli- 
gious messages of the new President 
and the Governors of the various Com- 
monwealths, all go to show that we 
are a Christian nation. 

But on the other hand the appalling 
fact revealed by the statement of the 
most representative Protestant paper of 
the country, the Independent, that out 
of our 75,000,000 people only 23,000,- 
000 belong to any Christian denomi- 
nation, Catholics included, and sec- 
ondly the startling and ever in- 
creasing emptiness of our churches, 
coupled with the scandalous revolt 
of so many ministers of religion 
against what was considered hitherto 
as the essential tenet of Protestant 
Christianity viz. : the authority of the 
Bible, and the rejection by so many of 
them of the doctrine of the divinity of 
Jesus Christ whom they accept merely 
as a religious teacher, force upon us the 
dreadful conviction that what Christi- 
anity there is in the country is fast disap- 
pearing. 

Does that mean that our existence as 
a nation is menaced ? We might an- 
swer that question by another. Have 
we any right to expect any other result 
than what has happened elsewhere 
under similar conditions ? 

Washington in his Farewell Address 
has warned us that ' ' reason and ex- 
perience both forbid us to expect that 
national morality can prevail in exclu- 
sion of religious principles." And 
where there is no national morality, 
there is national ruin. Gladstone has 
said the same thing of England. Other 
great men have expressed themselves 
in a similar strain ; and for the mat- 
ter of that, though so easily lost 
sight of, it is almost a self-evident 
proposition. 

But are there facts to support this 
pessimistic theory ? 

They are not wanting. Neglecting 
such agents of corruption as the litera- 
ture of the day which exerts a most 
malign influence even upon our children, 



and which such a competent^judge as 
Marion Crawford declares to be "the 
worst, the vilest, the most degrading, 
and the most criminal literature that has 
ever disgraced civilization' ' ; omitting the 
influence which the stage exerts on 
what is now a theatre-loving people, 
and which, if half that is said of it be 
true, seems designed to excite the foul- 
est passions and inculcate the vilest 
principles of human conduct ; passing 
by all that, we are confronted with the 
fact that the vast majority of our school 
children never hear a word of Christi- 
anity during the entire school-week, and 
never enter a house of worship on Sun- 
day. What will the Christianity of 
these future men and women be? 
What is it now ? And yet the destinies 
of the United States will be in their 
hands in the next generation. Con- 
spicuous men among us, who are not 
Catholics, have already raised the note 
of alarm. 

Add to this the ominous condition of 
American life in the matter of marriage, 
in which there is not only a falling off, 
but a wholesale apostacy from the spirit 
and legislation of Christianity. The 
condition of things is not only humiliat- 
ing and shameful, but appalling. Mul- 
hall in his Dictionary of Statistics tells 
us (and his authority is unimpeachable) 
that ' ' the actual number of divorces 
granted, in the twenty years that pre- 
ceded 1886, was in the United States 
328,716, while in the same period 
throughout the entire Continent of Eu- 
rope there were approximately 258,000. 
The population of Europe at that time 
was 350,000,000, while ours was a trifle 
over 50, 000, 000. ' ' That is to say Europe 
had seven times as many people as we, 
and yet we — distanced it by nearly 70,- 
000 divorces. Is Christianity waning or 
not? That was fifteen years ago, 
and we have gone down deeper in the 
abyss since then. It is wise to remem- 
ber that the world-wide empire of 
Rome, the most stupendous political 
structure ever built, dated its destruc- 



The Only True American School System. 



tion from the multiplication of its divor- 
ces. Can we promise ourselves a dif- 
ferent fate? 

The record of crime is still more dis- 
tressing. In 1880, our prison popula- 
tion was 59, 259; that is, 1,180 for every 
million inhabitants. Already in 1899, 
the number had risen to 82,329 and of 
these 7,386 were charged with homi- 
cide. In 1886 alone, 1,499 murders 
were committed, while in Germany in 
the same year, with its population of 
48,000,000, as against our 60,000,000, 
there were only 337 homicides. Four 
years after, namely in 1890 alone, we 
have the horrible record of 3,567 mur- 
ders. The Chicago Tribune quoted by 
Mulhall says that in the six years be- 
tween 1 884- 1 889 there were no less 
than 14, 770 murders and 975 lynchings, 
which of course are murders in an ag- 
gravated and atrocious form, with the 
guilt of blood on all the abettors. 

Nor is this frightful increase in homi- 
cide due chiefly to the foreign element. 
The World Almanac of 1901 informs 
us as to the nativity of the 4,425 white 
homicidal criminals in jail, that "3,157 
were born in the United States, and 
1,213 foreign born." The 2,739 ne- 
gro murderers are of course native to 
the soil. 

With regard to the scenes which are 
occurring in certain parts of our country 
with such alarming frequency and with 
circumstances of such unexampled 
ferocity, we say nothing except to note 
that it is not an imported crime, and 
that if the negroes against whom the 
fury is raging had been Catholicized, 
they would not be regarded now as 
wild beasts. It is a boast in the South, 
that the foreign element has not entered 
there. 

We may well heed the warning of 
the Protestant Bishop of Western 
Texas, who is quoted in the New York 
Sun as saying: ' ' The conditions around 
us are to lead in a few decades to a 
struggle the like of which has never 
been seen in this country, and it will be 



with a generation that will not believe 
in anything at all." 

There is no denying the danger ahead 
of us. The question is, how is it to be 
averted. Why of course, we are told, 
"by the churches." But they are 
empty, and it is a physical impossibility 
to reach the people through that agen- 
cy. They are not there to hear, and 
even if they were, the jarring and dis- 
cord of the preachers would soon drive 
them out. 

"Let men think then, and their 
reason will guide them aright." As a 
matter of fact, it is a prevailing im- 
pression with our more than self-suffi- 
cient fellow countrymen that each man 
is a law unto himself, quite competent 
to formulate his religious views and 
frame his code of morals. If we have 
a national religion, it is that. 

However flattering such an assump- 
tion may be to our self-conceit, it is in 
flat contradiction with reason and ex- 
perience. Think out his own religion ! 
Can the mud-stained laborer who per- 
haps has taken his dinner in the ditch 
and who stumbles home after his hard 
day's work to a miserable tenement 
amid a swarm of squalling children to 
snatch a few hours rest for the toil of 
the morrow, do any independent think- 
ing on the abstruse matters of morality 
or religion? Can the mechanic who 
slaves at his bench, or the clerk at his 
desk, or the merchant, engrossed in 
money making, or even the lawyer or 
physician absorbed by the anxieties of 
his profession, sit down and ponder the 
vast mysteries of the spiritual world ? 
Taking man as he is, actuated by 
passion, absorbed in business pursuits, 
apathetic from constitutional sluggish- 
ness and averse to anything outside the 
domain of sense, though he may attain 
to some religious knowledge there are 
a thousand chances to one that he will 
not bestir himself at all, and there are 
more chances still that if he does, he 
will blunder in the most elementary 
truth. But above all that, there are 



The Only True American School Systern. 



mysteries which no man can fathom 
and for which instruction is indispensa- 
ble. We ask a policeman or a passer- 
by to guide us in a strange city; can we 
all unaided find the path that leads 
over the limitless universe of the un- 
seen? If the meanest handicraft as 
well as the most learned profession re- 
quires an instructor who perhaps has 
spent years in acquiring the knowledge 
he possesses, surely an acquisition of the 
sublime truths of religion requires 
similar assistance. The mere motor- 
man, or the man with the hoe needs 
some one to show him how. It is in 
the very nature of things. We cannot 
or do not evolve knowledge out of our 
helpless ignorance. Aid must come 
from above, and as the beneficent sun- 
shine beaming on the cold and lifeless 
earth calls up the flowers and the 
fruitage that delight and sustain the 
world, so in the realm of the intellect, 
the brightness of the knowledge that 
our fellow-men as well as the generations 
that have preceded us have acquired, 
must dispel the darkness of our mind 
and make it beautiful and safe with the 
light it imparts. 

Where shall we find this teacher in 
religious matters ? Where shall we find 
him especially for our children, who 
assuredly are not independent thinkers 
in any thing and most of all in matters 
of religion. 

' ' There are two ways to solve the 
problem," says the Educational Review 
which voices the best non-Catholic 
views on this particular subject. ' ' One 
is to teach religion in the churches, 
Sunday-schools and homes, and such 
is the average Protestant position; the 
second is to teach it in the schools as 
Catholics and Lutherans insist." 

With regard to the first, he makes 
the astounding admission that " Prot- 
estants are shockingly lax in fulfilling 
their obligations in this respect, and 
still more shockingly incapable of rising 
to an appreciation of their responsi- 
bility." "The other," he continues, 



viz. : ' ' that of teaching religion in 
schools, is fraught with too many diffi- 
culties to be even thought of." 

Deploring ' ' the shocking laxity of 
the average Protestant in appreciating 
his responsibility," and animadverting 
that Catholics and Lutherans are not 
alone in insisting upon religion being 
taught in the schools (for Methodists 
and Episcopalians and Congregational- 
ists "and Friends, the Evening Post of 
August 31, 1 90 1 assures us, are doing 
the same thing), let us ask what are the 
reasons why the project as Lutherans 
and Catholics view it, cannot be even 
thought of. 

The first reason alleged is the uproar 
which the proposition caused when first 
mooted • in the recent revision of the 
Charter of the City of New York. 

To this we reply that it is a humili- 
ating confession for men who boast so 
much of the strenuous life to be balked 
in any honest project by a little noise. 
After admitting that religion is an es- 
sential element in education, that at- 
tempts to substitute an independent 
morality are fatuous and have signally 
failed; that the project which the aver- 
age Protestant favors holds out no hope 
of realization; that it is indispensable 
for the welfare of the nation, and that 
Catholics and Lutherans and others, 
have successfully adopted it; and then 
to retreat because a few noisy and ob- 
streperous demagogues are averse to it, 
is to act in a manner that is not credit- 
able to American manhood. If the 
course is just, necessary and feasible, 
if the country's salvation depends on it, 
why not follow it at any cost ? Its op- 
ponents counted precisely on this faint- 
heartedness and must be greatly amused 
at the haste of its adherents to display 
the white feather. 

The second reason against teaching 
religion in schools, though not explic- 
itly formulated, is that it is not Ameri- 
can. If it is not, it ought to be. But it is 
American and essentially so ; and only re- 
cent times have brought about the pres- 



The Only True American School System. 



ent dangerous conditions. Harvard was 
founded for training Calvinist ministers; 
Yale was intensely Calvinistic as were all 
the subsidiary schools which supplied 
both colleges with students. The old 
New England primary schools were 
thoroughly religious, and in the quaint 
Puritan phraseology of the day were 
mainly ' ' to circumvent the devices of 
Satan. ' ' The Evening Post of Septem- 
ber 7, 1 90 1, says that at the present 
day, of the 1,957 secondary schools with 
their 200,000 pupils and 9,410 teachers 
(and of course the number is vastly 
larger in the primary grades), more 
than one-half are strictly religious. Are 
they un-American ? To say that we are 
tampering with the Palladium of Ameri- 
can Liberty by advocating religious 
teaching, is not to know the school 
history of this country, and to be blind 
to the, fact that not only can there be no 
liberty without religion, but that it is a 
descent into paganism with its horrible 
and necessary tyranny of soul and 
body. Instead of being a Palladium of 
Liberty, irreligious and unreligious 
schools become the Wooden Horse that 
will destroy the city. 

The enthusiasm for the schools as at 
present constituted, springs from a 
groundless assumption of their superi- 
ority to any other system that any one 
has hitherto conceived ; and this im- 
pression is sedulously cultivated in the 
minds of the pupils themselves and of 
the public at large, and with it, of course, 
a corresponding contempt for what are 
commonly known as parochial schools. 
The esteem and the contempt are both 
without foundation. 

In the first place we might animad- 
vert that it is a peculiar grace of God 
to see ourselves as others see us, es- 
pecially if those others are our friends. 
Other men's views about us are often 
revelations. Thus the N. Y. Evening 
Post of March 19, 1900, in a review of 
a book on the History of Education 
condemns ' ; the unstinted praise that is 
given to modern school books and 



modern systems of education. It is 
enough to enter a modern school room 
and see how these systems are applied, 
with the very minimum of genuine re- 
flection and good sense, to understand 
at once why it is that the rising gener- 
ation produce iipon men in the after- 
noon of life such an impression of feeble- 
ness.'" The President of the School- 
master's Association of the United 
States frankly declared in the annual 
convention that ' ' it would be better to 
read a novel of Balzac than to attempt 
to master some of the pedagogical stuff 
that is inflicted on the teachers of the 
present day." Charles Stuart, the ex- 
School Commissioner of Ohio, writing 
in the Eorum admits that " our popular 
education is superficial and does not de- 
velop mind or character." The Times 
Supplement of March 31, 1900, informs 
its readers ' ' that the great political lead- 
ers of France and England are literary 
men and inquires why similar cases are 
rare in the United States." It makes 
answer that ' ' with us there is more edu- 
cation but less scholarship," which is 
an admission of poor education. 

Besides, it is impossible to shut our 
eyes to the lamentable condition of 
many of our public schools as they now 
exist. Even in the Capital of the coun- 
try they called from the Senate Investi- 
gation Committee the scathing report 
quoted in the N. Y. Tribune April 19, 
1900, that "the result of a thorough 
and fair trial showed a deplorable want 
of training in the grades the young peo- 
ple were supposed to have mastered. In 
history and arithmetic the general aver- 
age made was not much over fifty per 
cent. The penmanship was poor and the 
spelling miserably bad." Senator 
Stewart, the chairman of the committee, 
said : ' ' The children seem to have had 
very indifferent instruction. The teach- 
ers of to-day are victims of a bad system ; 
the old fashioned schools did much 
better work in spite of the fact that the 
path of learning has been made smoother 
and many things simplified." In Ala- 



The Only True American School System. 



bama the State Board of Examiners 
have discovered ' ' the most deplorable 
ignorance, even among men who had 
received teachers' certificates." The 
Educational Review May i, 1900, 
quoting the Courant of St. Paul, Minn. , 
gives what it terms ' ' a melancholy 
picture of the deplorable condition of 
the public schools of that city. ' ' The 
N.Y. Commercial Advei'tiser, April 14, 
1 goo, reports that " charges were made 
by the Board of Education of Chicago, 
that the teachers of the public schools 
fail to instruct the pupils in the most 
necessary branches of learning ; one 
trustee asserting that half the teachers, 
most of whom are said to be graduates 
of the local high schools, could not 
speak or write English, or spell cor- 
rectly. The superintendent admitted 
that many of the teachers were deficient 
in these points, but that the fault was 
with the system in which they were in- 
structed and in which they were in- 
structing others." Finally the dis- 
tinguished Dr. Eliot, of Harvard, la- 
ments that even the public schools of 
Boston, which were supposed to be irre- 
proachable, "are not what they were 
fifty years ago. ' ' 

This ought to be sufficient to dispose 
forever of that ridiculous old fetish, 
before which so many have been down 
on their knees for years past and to 
which they have ascribed so many mar- 
vellous and supernatural powers. On 
the public school question the average 
American is curiously superstitious. 

Such being the case, and in the face 
of such authority it would be silly to 
deny it, it is manifestly improper to look 
with disdain upon schools which are not 
of the public schqol system and to 
taunt them with inferiority. The retort 
is in order ' ' Physician cure thyself. ' ' It 
is annoying, on the other hand, to hear 
such reproaches from Catholics, espe- 
cially when their personal qualifications 
scarcely fit them for passing judgment 
in such matters. Moreover it is alto- 
gether unfair to pile a mountain on a 



man and then reproach him with inac- 
tivity. P Catholics all over the land, al- 
though crushed by school taxes for 
other men's children, have been com- 
pelled to burden themselves besides 
with heavy outlays for their own. 
Aided by thousands of religious men 
and women who have without compensa- 
tion consecrated themselves to the work, , 
they have erected schools that at 
times equal in their equipment some of 
the best built by the State ; out of their 
hard earnings, they have disbursed mil- 
lions of dollars, and without the cost of 
a penny to the State are educating now 
more than 1,000,000 children. Not 
only that, but they have saved the 
country from dishonor before the civ- 
ilized world. There are thousands of 
children on the street to-day, for whom 
the public schools have no accommoda- 
tions ; vast numbers of others can have 
but a half session for the same reason. 
Suppose the million Catholic children 
of the parochial schools were added 
to this abandoned multitude. Catho- 
lics assumed the burden of educating 
them. The service is not recognized 
but suspected, ^r 

Nor is the education of Catholic 
schools below grade. We have not 
heard that their graduates have any 
difficulty in securing admission to the 
High and Normal schools. On the 
contrary, the percentage of success is 
remarkably large. In competitions for 
West Point and Annapolis, parish 
schools easily carry off the prize and 
where there has been a trial of strength 
with the same text-books and the same 
course, as in Poughkeepsie and else- 
where, Catholic schools were invar- 
iably in the lead. In fact, there is a 
suspicion abroad that the cancelling of 
school contracts in some places was due 
to that fact. 

We have no means at our disposal to 
institute a comparison all along the 
line ; but Catholics are the same the 
world over, and the recent Examina- 
tion Results in Ireland, for example, 



The Only True American School System. 



show the exclusively Catholic Univer- 
sity College of Dublin, far and away be- 
yond all the others. Similar success is 
noted in England, and the troubles in 
France emphasize the same truth. 
There is not a shadow of a doubt that the 
popularity of the Catholic schools de- 
termined their suppression and im- 
pelled the infidel government to seize 
the establishments and turn out the 
teachers as beggars in the street. The 
correspondent of the Evening Post of 
September 3, 1901, impliedly admits it. 

Why should they not achieve such 
results ? Religion does not make peo- 
ple stupid. The brightest minds that 
modern civilization has known have 
been the product of religious schools ; 
and Catholics especially have sacrificed 
too much to be satisfied with an infer- 
ior education. Give us a fair field and 
no favor. That is all we ask. 

This leads us to the third and real 
reason of the opposition to religious 
teaching in the schools viz. : the fear of 
Catholicity; the dread that Catholics 
will profit by it most. ' ' Well what if 
they do profit most ? " " Why, such a 
result would be a menace to the coun- 
try." "Indeed!" "Yes, there is some- 
thing about every Catholic that pre- 
vents him from being a genuine Ameri- 
can." If not expressed in so many 
words there is a vague undefined feeling 
in men's minds that such is the case. 

Strange fatality ! I am a Catholic 
and cannot be a true American. I am 
thus a man without a country, and yet 
with greater rights perhaps than others 
to possess one. 

In this connection there are some 
cherished memories almost romantic 
but nevertheless deeply religious which 
cluster around a certain obscure hill that 
juts out on the southern bank of the Mo- 
hawk. As we stand on its crest the eye 
follows the leisurely windings of the river 
and rests on rich meadow lands that 
come down to the water edge heavy 
with the harvest, while glimpses are 
caught of far off farms and homesteads 



high up on the slope of the receding 
mountains. Out of the great marts 
which commerce has built all along 
the valley, from the Hudson to the 
Lakes, the rumbling trains speed with 
their precious freight along the iron 
roads, either side of the stream, on their 
way to the great Metropolis and the 
ocean beyond. The commingling of all 
these beauties of untouched and culti- 
vated nature with the frequent appari- 
tions of the great convoys of industry 
which traverse but do not invade this 
beautiful region, affords an ever vary- 
ing delight to the eye, all day long, but 
mostly in the brightness of the early 
morning, or when the setting sun 
clothes the scene with splendor. 

But the picture fades into another — a 
gloomy one of the long past when that 
country was a wilderness, two-hundred 
and sixty years ago. The hill on which 
we are standing was covered with In- 
dian wigwams, and in the midst of the 
squalid camp, toiled a man to whom 
much of the transformation that we now 
see around us is to be attributed. It 
is mid-winter ; he is almost naked and 
pierced to the bone by the bitter cold. 
Long scars on his limbs show where the 
savages had cut the quivering flesh to 
eat it before his eyes; burning coals had 
left their marks on him ; and the livid 
bruises revealed the places where the 
ponderous clubs had struck him. His 
fingers had been torn off by the teeth 
of his captors and for a year and a half 
he labored among them striving to force 
some gleam of Christianity into their 
degraded natures until at last his head 
was cloven by the blow of the toma- 
hawk. On a stake of the palisade that 
ghastly head was fixed and his mangled 
body flung into the waters of the river. 

That man died for the civilization of 
this country, and it was twenty years 
before the English sailed into the har- 
bor of New York. He was a Catholic, 
a priest and a Jesuit. Was he, there- 
fore, an enemy of this country ? Were 
not those characteristics the very reasons 



The Only True American School System. 



why he gave up his life for his fellow- 
men and the redemption of this land of 
ours in whose civilization and greatness 
we now rejoice ? Even if he were the 
only martyr that the Church has given 
to America (and there are many) his 
blood would have written upon this 
land of ours that a Catholic is not an 
alien here. The first pioneers of civili- 
zation in this western world were 
Catholics, and the Catholic cross was 
planted on these shores, not only by 
Columbus in San Salvador, but centu- 
ries before by Lief -Eric- in Massachu- 
setts. The names of Catholic saints 
and Catholic mysteries are stamped 
upon our rivers and lakes and moun- 
tains, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
and the right of occupation was admit- 
ted long before those of other faiths 
entered Boston harbor or the river 
James ; Catholics were conspicuous in 
the Revolutionary struggle; they fought 
for their country in 1812 while Puritan 
New England was ringing bells for 
English victories ; they led the nation's 
troops in the war of Secession and died 
by thousands as privates in the ranks, 
from Bull Run to Appomatox ; they 
fought against Catholic Mexico, and 
later on against Catholic Spain ; they 
have covered the country with monu- 
ments of charity in their asylums and 
hospitals, giving hostages thus of loy- 
alty to their native land; hundreds of 
thousands of their chosen ones have 
relinquished all the delights of home to 
succor the poor and afflicted ; as a 
class they are remarkable for their ab- 
sence from the ranks of those enemies 
of all government, the Socialists and 
Anarchists ; they are honored in every 
walk of life for their ability, integrity 
and success, and yet, in spite of all this, 
are objects to many of suspicion and 
distrust. In fact, have we not been 
called upon in the press by one who is, 
apparently, a public man, and who 
admits the great benefits accruing to 
this country from Catholicity, notably, 
' ' because it trains the young in a way 



to secure good morals and respect 
property rights and the rights of 
others," to demand that the Head of 
the Church should declare that he har- 
bors no designs against this nation. 
In other words, we are saving our 
country and yet are suspected of de- 
stroying it. He did not mean it, of 
course, for his purpose is apparently 
benevolent, but these are the tactics of 
the man who seizes a purse and cries : 
' ' Stop thief, ' ' in order to distract at- 
tention from himself. Not we, but you 
who are refusing religious education to 
the rising generation, and preventing 
us from giving it to our own, are bring- 
ing ruin on the country. We really 
are true Americans and not you. 

Far from conflicting with the patri- 
otic spirit, Catholicity fosters and pro- 
tects it. Is an Irishman less Irish be- 
cause he is a Catholic ? a Spaniard less 
Spanish ? a Frenchman less French be- 
cause he is a Catholic ? On the con- 
trary, their nationality is intensified be- 
cause of their faith; for Catholicity incul- 
cates patriotism not as a sentiment but 
as a sacred duty ; and if an American 
is a Catholic, or rather because he is 
one, he not only does not yield to 
any man in love of his native land, but 
impelled by the teaching of his church 
will be more loyal, and more self-sacri- 
ficing in time of peace or stress of war 
than others who are not of the faith. 

In this connection it may be well to 
quote the opinion of Senator Hoar, the 
venerable statesman, whose long years 
of noble and unselfish devotion to the 
country's best interests entitle him to a 
hearing. He was endorsing the nomi- 
nation of the Governor of Massachusets 
and in referring to the subject of an- 
archy, said : "I believe if every Protes- 
tant were to be stricken down by a 
lightning stroke, our brethren of the 
Catholic faith would still carry on the 
Republic in the spirit of true and liberal 
freedom. I believe if every man of 
native birth were to die this day, the 
men of foreign birth who have come 



The Only True American School System. 



here to seek homes and liberty under 
the shadow of the Republic would 
carry on the Republic in God's ap- 
pointed way." 
Y The Catholic Church has no designs 
on the Public Schools. It is satisfied to 
leave them as they are for those who 
wish them, but it does not want and 
will not have for its children, in the peri- 
od of their defencelessness, an educa- 
tion which it is convinced will ultimately 
make those children a curse to their 
country, by robbing them of those prin- 
ciples of morality which are indispen-' 
sable in forming them into honorable and 
pure men and women. It has lost too 
much, even here in America, by contact 
with irreligion ; it has lived too long in 
the world not to know that religion is nec- 
essary to prevent the ruin of a nation, 
and it has too many horrible examples 
in the crimes of the apostate govern- 
ments of to-day, to allow it to sit idly by, 
without attempting to prevent simi- 
lar disasters here. It will not be satis- 
/ fied with the odious hour after school, 
which in the child-mind makes religion 
penal, but it wants the atmosphere of 
its schools to be such that religion will 
enter as a motive and a guide of what 
is to be done and avoided. It wants 
the child to begin to be what he ought 
to be later on in life, honest, pure, 
faithful in his duty to his God and his 
fellowmen, as the light of his religion 
points out and as its sacramental helps 
assist him to become. It does not want 
the child to imagine that religion is an 
affair of Sunday and has nothing to do 
with the rest of the week. ^\ It does not 
comprehend the offer of a well-known 
President of a Protestant University to 
teach Catholicity by lectures. Such a 
pretence displays a deplorable inability 
to appreciate what religion really is. 
Faith is not truth alone but life. 

But in the most positive and aggres- 
sive tones we are told : ' ' Separate 
schools are absolutely out of the ques- 
tion. What we want is homogeneity of 
education in order to blend the diverse 



nationalities of our land into one com- 
mon Americanism." 

It may be noted in passing that this 
proclamation is often made by men who 
have had no public school education, 
or who have never been inside Ameri- 
can schools at all. 

To this challenge we reply that ho- 
mogeneity of education is absurd ; it is 
undemocratic ; it is socialistic ; it is 
un-American ; it is often a political 
scheme, and it is unchristian and irre- 
ligious. 

You might as well try to have the 
trees of the forest with the same sized 
leaves ; you might as well insist upon 
men belonging to the same political 
party, or pursuing the same occupation, 
living in the same kind of house, eating 
the same food or wearing the same style 
of dress, or thinking the same kind of 
thought and arriving at the same con- 
clusions by the same methods. You 
have no more right to make me homo- 
geneous with you than I to make you 
homogeneous with me. A resemblance 
sometimes may be very undesirable. 
The strength and beauty of the uni- 
verse and of everything in it, whether 
of the natural or spiritual order, is not 
a unity of monotony and sameness, but 
a unity of variety, a unity achieved by an 
autiiority and influence that holds the 
infinitely divergent types together and 
makes them all cooperate to a common 
end. In that the beauty of the world 
consists, but our apostles of homo- 
geneity conceive it as an asphalt road 
over which the educational roller has 
passed. It might be good to remember 
that streets of tar, in spite of the roller, 
become rivers of fire in a conflagration. 
Bryce, in his American Commo>nvealth, 
pointed out that ' ' our greatest social 
danger lay in the production of dead 
levels." Besides, who are you, my 
friend, that, you decide off hand that 
your type of the homogeneous is cor- 
rect ? And lastly, why are you con- 
tinually proclaiming that the aim of the 
American school is to develop indi- 



IO 



The Only True American School System. 



viduality, while in the same breath you 
demand homogeneity ? The two quali- 
ties are contradictory. 

Secondly, the scheme is violently 
undemocratic. If homogeneity of edu- 
cation is really and honestly essential 
for true Americanism, then abolish 
forthwith all your great institutions like 
Yale and Harvard, which are supposed 
to differentiate their pupils, socially at 
least, from all other Americans, and 
which are even differentiated from each 
other in tone and tradition. The ' ' Yale 
spirit" is not Harvard's, nor Harvard's 
Princeton's, nor Princeton's Cornell's. 

More than that. Close all your ex- 
pensive private schools which are es- 
tablished everywhere by Americans, yet 
which are so many sacred and inviola- 
ble preserves for the children of the 
rich — for no plebeian enters there — and 
dismiss your private governess or be 
ready to let the public official knock at 
your door and inquire if what she 
teaches corresponds in time and matter 
with the programme of the State. Does 
this seem absurd ? It is done in 
Germany now and such inspection 
was seriously proposed in a recent 
school law before the Legislature of the 
State of New York. If your rich man 
does not send his children to the public 
school lest they should sit side by side 
with the children of his servants, or of 
the mechanic or laborer, why should I 
not be allowed (not that I avoid the 
poor, for we are mostly poor) to with- 
draw mine for greater than social or 
sanitary reasons ? Or does the scheme 
propose that only the children of the 
poor should be thus homogeneously 
huddled together ? If so, and such is 
its intent, it is class legislation ; it is 
undemocratic and unjust. 

Thirdly, homogeneity is a foreign 
importation. It is French and not 
American. It is precisely what Wal- 
deck Rousseau is imposing on France 
with an iron hand at the present mo- 
ment. He uses the same shibboleth of 
homogeneity and is perpetrating this 



great crime of the century by robbery 
and expatriation. It is the old political 
scheme of Napoleon Bonaparte, who 
carried it out so vigorously that his 
Minister of Education could boast that 
at any hour of the day he could tell 
what every child in France was reciting. 
And the project of a national university 
in the United States with its centre in 
Washington as mooted here, is nothing 
but a recrudescence of that discredited 
foreign plan of intellectual and political 
slavery. We object to all this homo- 
geneity, 'whether in nation, state or city, 
because it is absolutely un-American, 
because it is state socialism and because, 
just as Bonaparte brutally declared that 
the fundamental purpose of his national 
university was to inculcate loyalty to 
the Napoleonic dynasty, so in the same 
way, homogeneity in city, state or nation 
will tend infallibly to perpetuate the 
sway of the political party that hap- 
pens to be in power. In point of fact, 
the declaration of the National Edu- 
cation Association which is furthering 
this project bluntly avows that its pur- 
pose is "to lead public sentiment into 
legislation when necessary." This is 
novel in America, but is not American. 
We object to it most emphatically for 
educational reasons also ; because just as 
the Napoleonic university has wrecked 
genuine education throughout France, 
as official investigations have shown, 
the same results are sure to follow here 
if this scheme is carried out. No better 
proof of it could be given than the very 
Declaration which is launched by this 
National Association of American Edu- 
cation. Its framers style themselves 
"educational experts," and yet are 
guilty in several parts of the document 
of an obscurity of thought, an inconse- 
quence of reasoning and an incorrect- 
ness of language that would disgrace a 
dull boy in a common school. 

We object to it likewise for patriotic 
reasons. And this position of ours 
ought to have especial force at this ter- 
rible moment of our country's history. 



The Only True American School System. 



ii 



We find in the Herald of September 
12, 1 90 1, that the fourth article in the 
anarchist programme is " unreligious 
schools." Is not that reason enough 
to multiply our religious schools as a 
breakwater, and to force all men to co- 
operate in that federation of churches 
which is called for by some of the most 
distinguished men in New York (New- 
York Sun, September 12, 1901), "in 
behalf of the spiritual, physical, educa- 
tional and social interests of family 
life. ' ' We have all along seen the perils 
which are now striking such terror into 
the heart of the country. 

Lastly, it is idle to say that the homo- 
geneity intended is merely one of lan- 
guage or of Americanism. Can these 
results not be achieved just as well in de- 
nominational schools ? Diversity of 
language among the children of the im- 
migrants need not worry us. A walk 
in Mulberry street, in the Italian quar- 
ter, will convince us that the sidewalk 
does more than the school in that re- 
spect. The children of the second or 
even of the first generation do not 
speak the language of their parents. 
Nor do they want to be Americans 
with a prefix. They are not German or 
Irish or Italian Americans, but just as 
ardent Americans as those whose par- 
ents were immigrants a hundred years 
ago. That is not the result about 
which any sensible man should concern 
himself, but there is one which must in- 
evitably follow as a consequence of this 
unintelligent jumbling together of the 
children of divergent and conflicting re- 
ligious beliefs ; a result which we dare 
not say was intended or perhaps even 
foreseen by the majority of our people, 
but which, nevertheless, as Protestant 
educators all over the land, as well as 
Protestant bishops and ministers, are 
pointing out, is threatening the very 
existence of the nation; a homogeneity, 
namely, not of language nor of Ameri- 
canism, but a homogeneity of irreligion; 
the elimination and practical negation 
of all Christian beliefs during five con- 



secutive days of every week of the 
child's life, with nothing to counteract 
it on Sunday ; for these children, like 
their parents, are not church goers. It 
is the cancelling of Christianity from 
the life of the nation. This is homo- 
geneity. Is it Americanism ? And 
are we to be looked upon with suspi- 
cion because we do not send our million 
of children to join the throng upon 
whom this robbery is being committed ? 

Perhaps you have not intended or 
foreseen it here ; but it looks as if you 
have, for you are ruthlessly at work 
with the same axe in the Philippines, 
where without diversity of sects to ex- 
cuse you — for they are all Catholics 
there — without the plea of an ignorant 
population — for they are better edu- 
cated than many of our own natives — 
in spite of promises and treaties and 
merely to satisfy the demands of this 
blind idolatry, you flood the country 
with teachers who cannot fail to sneer 
at the religion of their pupils in spite of 
your injunctions to the contrary, and 
you contemptuously sweep out of their 
school-rooms every symbol of Catholic 
faith with the necessary result of dis- 
paraging it in the eyes of the children. 
This is homogeneity. Is it American- 
ism ? Be quite sure that if you make 
bad Catholics out of the Filipinos you 
will not make them good Americans. 

Meantime, in those same regions, you 
not only do not interfere in the slightest 
with the subjects of the Sultan of Sulu, 
who are nothing but degraded Ma- 
hometans and who practise their relig- 
ion, polygamy included ; you do not 
force upon them your homogeneous 
education, but carefully, and by law, 
protect them in all they choose to do, 
along with their horrible institution of 
slavery. Is that Americanism ? Is it 
Americanism to treat your fellow-Chris- 
tians worse than idolaters and Mahom- 
etans ? It is not even homogeneity. 

We blush for the illiberality, bigotry 
and injustice of our countrymen both 
here and abroad, or at least for their 



12 



The Only True American School System. 



inability to see what they are doing and 
we wonder what has become of our fa- 
mous American boast: " Americans 
love fair play. " Or is it all bluster ? 

That we are permitting ourselves, 
blindly or not, to be de-christianized is 
clear from the Report of the National 
Educational Association held in Chi- 
cago February 27, 1900, where this 
dreadful utterance was made, appar- 
ently assented to by the Association 
and published subsequently in the Edu- 
cational Review over the signature of 
Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia 
College, New York. 

"Five men," it declares, "Rous- 
seau, Hegel, Frcebel, Pestalozzi and 
Herbart, have given to the nineteenth 
century education most of its philosoph- 
ical foundation and not a few of its 
methods. From them have come the 
main influences which have shaped 
education for a hundred years." In 
amazement and distress, we may well 
apply to the National Educational As- 
sociation, which formulated this state- 
ment or permitted it, the words of 
Christ on the Cross : ' ' Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they 
do." 

Putting aside Pestalozzi and Frcebel 
who were personal failures as educators, 
we find in this list Hegel who was a 
frantic pantheist ; Herbart who was a 
disciple of that other pantheist Fichte 
and who said of God that ' ' He could 
not be known and for practical pur- 
poses it was not desirable that He 
should be " ; and at the head of the 
list we find to our horror Jean Jacques 
Rousseau who is properly put as the 
chief coryphaeus in this national dance 
of death. 

Listen to what he says, if you can do 
so with patience. ' ' The child who is 
being educated is to acknowledge no 
authority. If you compel him to take 
your word you teach him to be a dupe 
later on in life ; he is to indulge his de- 
sires unchecked," — gluttony is given as 
an example, and he says, ' ' even if the 



child harms himself, do not reprove him — 
which implies that of course he is to be 
given free rein in the other cravings of 
nature ; self-love is the only natural 
quality to be recognized in the child 
and not only indulged but cultivated ; 
he should hear nothing whatever about 
God ; he is to be inspired with con- 
tempt for the ministers of religion who 
ought to be expelled from the commu- 
nity, as not only useless but pernicious 
to the State. ' If I had to paint a pic- 
ture of disgicsting stupidity, ' he says, 
' I would paint a pedant teaching cate- 
chism to his pupils ; and if I wanted to 
make a child a fool I would oblige him. 
to explain what he says in reciting his 
catechism. Getting him to accept 
mysteries is accustoming him early to 
lie. ' He is not to be taught any relig- 
ion, and if there is to be a common 
creed it must be made up of the funda- 
mental dogmas of Judaism, Mahom- 
etanism and Christianity, and the one 
who shall teach anything contrary to it 
is to be banished from the country. 
The pupil must be taught that the ex- 
ercise of authority is tyranny ; the 
possession of property, robbery, and 
the laws of the nation fetters on his 
liberty." 

These are Rousseau's own words 
who, be it remembered was a man 
whose life was disgustingly immoral, and 
who in one of his books was shame- 
less enough to enter into the most 
lubricous details of what he did. His 
teaching, openly and professedly incul- 
cates immorality, atheism, anarchy, and 
of course by an immediate deduction, 
assassination. X And yet we are told by 
the National Educational Association 
that "his is the main influence which 
has shaped the education of the nine- 
teenth century." X 

Do you want your children to be edu- 
cated under such influences ? Do you 
want them to be the future anarchists 
who will wreck the domestic and politi- 
cal fabric of this country, and be the 
frenzied assassins who will assert their 



The Only True American School System. 



1 3 



contempt for all authority by putting 
bullets in the bodies of your future 
Presidents ; and who will surely, if God 
does not intervene, bring about the 
same horrors in this country as the 
teachings of this very man effected in 
France a hundred years ago in causing 
that almost diabolical uprising, the 
French Revolution ? 

If you do, we Catholics do not ; and 
for that reason we want religious edu- 
cation. That is our only reason for 
opposing the system which, in our 
opinion, if the National Educational As- 
sociation's programme alone be taken 
as a test, although there are many 
others at hand to excite the same fear, 
is an awful menace to our country. 
The New York Herald of September 
22 in a striking cartoon represents a 
little girl as standing before the door of 
a public school which is shut against 
her because of the inability of the State 
to give her an elementary education, 
and she is uttering the words : "I see 
this country's finish." No, poor child! 
not because you cannot learn a little 
spelling or arithmetic do ' ' you see this 
country's finish." It is better for you 
to remain out on the street, if inside the 
school, the principles are taught and 
the methods adopted of those enemies 
of God and humanity who revile au- 
thority, despise religion and blaspheme 
God. We hope that the statement 
of the National Educational Associa- 
tion is not universally true, but if that 
influence prevails then not merely every 
sensible man but even the child at the 
door can truly say : "I see this coun- 
try' s finish." 

Appalled by the recent disaster that 
has befallen the nation in the assassin- 
ation of the President, there is already 
talk of a common religion being taught 
in the public schools, and it is strongly 
urged by prominent Protestant clergy- 
men and even by a bishop. This is 
nothing but Rousseau's idea and a fur- 
thering of his infamous project. It is 
the modern substitute for State Pagan- 



ism. When the Caesars were perplexed 
by the multitudes of beliefs in the world, 
they obtained uniformity of worship by 
commanding an universal worship of 
the state. That hastened the ruin of the 
empire. Caesarism of any kind, espec- 
ially in religious matters, is dangerous 
in a nation, but most of all in a free re- 
public. Moreover any such mad scheme 
is absolutely unrealizable. It is a pagan 
idea and has been revived in modern 
times by one who hated both religion and 
the state. Because we love our country 
we oppose that project. It is un- 
American and unchristian. 

It is especially, we insist, because of 
this feature that Catholics are antago- 
nistic not, remember, to the public 
schools as such, but as they are at pres- 
ent conducted. Am I not perfectly 
within my rights ? Am I not wise and 
prudent, and sincerely and truly patri- 
otic? At the very moment that the 
leading Protestant educationalists 
throughout the land are clamoring for 
religion in education as a safeguard for 
the Republic, I find that under the pre- 
text of homogeneity and fictitious Amer- 
icanism, there is a scheme to rob my 
child in the hours that he is away from 
me, of what I regard as his best posses- 
sion ; to cheat him out of what I have 
labored to put in his little mind, the 
religion, namely, for which I have paid 
so dearly, and on account of which I 
am still suffering. Meantime, I ask my- 
self, why if I am endeavoring to bring 
up my child a Christian, I should be 
punished for it? And why from the 
schools which I support should Christi- 
anity be ostracized ? Are we not being 
de-christianized rapidly enough with- 
out having our public servants at high 
salaries accelerate the work. 

But I am told : ' ' You are not com- 
pelled to send your children to the pub- 
lic schools. " ' ' If I cannot avoid doing so 
except at a considerable expense, I am. 
Surely that is compelling me. " "Do 
you expect the state then to pay for 
your schools ? " " Certainly. " " Never, 



14 



The Only True American School System. 



I am answered promptly and harshly ; 
not a penny of the public funds for 
sectarian purposes." "Softly, Mr. 
Official, if it is public money, I have a 
right to my share. I am of the people. 
You are the servant and not the proprie- 
tor, and are to distribute the public 
funds justly and not according to your 
moods and prejudices. " " It is no prej- 
udice," is the reply, " it is against the 
whole spirit of the country to pay for 
the support of any religious theory. 
You might as well ask us to support 
your churches." (New York Sun, Sept. 
16, 1901.) " As to its being against the 
whole spirit of the country we may dis- 
agree, but do not worry about the 
churches. The ' religious theory ' is 
taught there, and nothing else. We 
are not asking you to help them. But 
in the schools it is different. I am 
giving all the secular training that is 
given in the State Schools. Why 
should not that be paid for ? As for 
teaching the religious theory, I'll pay 
for that." "But you must pay the 
public-school tax like every one else. 
" Every dollar of it ; only, I object to 
paying it twice, which no one else does. 
But if I teach my children the same 
things that are taught in the common 
schools and teach them better, and add, 
over and above, of my own volition and 
at my own expense, something which 
not only elevates their characters as men 
and women, but is absolutely necessary 
to the country's salvation ; if I make 
them genuine Americans and base their 
patriotism on a more solid foundation 
than you can ; if while you are com- 
pelled to accept any teacher that may 
be foisted on you by political or other 
influences, whether he be a Christian or 
a scoffer, and about whose manner of 
life I have only your guarantee, whose 
opinion I possibly may not value, while 
I can select those of whose abilities and 
exalted character I am almost absolutely 
sure ; if you are guided in your system 
by incapable men whose whole time is 
taken up in commercial pursuits, or 



political schemes ; while I am enjoying 
the privilege of the learning and ex- 
perience of those whose whole life is not 
only devoted but consecrated to the 
work ; if with all that, I am perfectly 
willing to admit government inspectors, 
either of the structure or of the re- 
quirements of hygiene, and even of the 
studies (barring of course religion, with 
which the state has nothing to do) 
why, pray, when I am conferring such 
inestimable advantages on the state, 
which even those who are not friendly 
to me acknowledge, should I not get 
the benefit of the school-tax which 
I pay to the state ? This is what 
puzzles me. That I am a sectarian is 
none of your business ; that I am an 
American citizen ought to ensure me 
my rights. As to the ' garb' of my 
teachers, that is as much my privilege 
as it is the state's to uniform its letter- 
carriers, or a private corporation its of- 
ficials. But more than that I am taught 
in American History that my country 
severed its connection with England 
because it was taxed without represent- 
ation ; that is to say, because it was 
left without the power of determining 
how the taxes which were levied on 
them should be applied ; but now I dis- 
cover that you, who are presumably not 
an Englishman, not only do not permit 
me to say how they should be applied, 
but you give my money to somebody 
else. Is this a new phase of American- 
ism ? If I were a criminal I could un- 
derstand how I should be debarred, 
but I am an honest hardworking man 
for whom every dollar counts ; who 
never have been before the courts, who 
have the interests of my country at 
heart, who never can get away from it 
like my rich friends; who have never 
stopped at any sacrifice to bring up my 
children honestly, and if I with my 
co-religionists have spent millions of 
money to give them the education 
which the wisest men in the land, Prot- 
estants as well as Catholics, admit now 
to be not merely the best but the only 



The Only True American School System. 



15 



safeguard of my country, because it in- 
culcates religion, why should I not be 
fairly and squarely dealt with and get 
the benefit of what is levied on me for 
education ? ' ' 

" It cannot be done," you say. " It 
is impossible to make any such division. ' ' 
Amazing ! You had no difficulty 
in collecting the funds in spite of the 
diversity of the sources from which 
they are derived ; and when I take up 
my paper in the morning I read that 
the Board of Apportionment regularly 
and without trouble assigns money to 
hospitals, asylums, roads, lamp-posts, 
schools, etc. Is there any insuperable 
difficulty in proceeding further with the 
division, or is the famous American in- 
stinct for mathematics disappearing? 
Can you divide by two but must you 
no longer be asked to divide by four ? 
Besides you exempt these schools from 
taxation because of the benefits they 
confer on the Commonwealth. That is 
subsidizing them. What is to prevent 
you then from doing a little more and 
making your recognition keep pace 
with the good you receive. He is not 
a very generous man who is satisfied 
that I should enrich him and who 
takes all I give without thanks. One 
ought to pay for what he gets. 

Moreover the distribution is very 
feasible. For the last few years we have 
been wearied to death by hearing that 
we are all Anglo-Saxon and that our ed- 
ucation especially has that stamp on it. 

If that be really so, why can we not 
do what Anglo-Saxon countries are do- 
ing in this respect; namely England and 
Germany which are not only intensely 
Protestant, but where Protestantism is 
the state-religion, to attack which or 
even to differ from which, was at one 
time high treason? England has its 
denominational schools ; the various 
sects insist on having them ; the Protes- 
tant Bishops in a recent memorial af- 
firmed as a principle that all elementary 
education should be paid for from the 
public purse; and the Government not 



only does not object but assists most 
liberally. It has no fear of Englishmen 
lacking the proper kind of homogen- 
eity. 

Even in Calvinistic Scotland which 
has been notoriously rancorous against 
Catholicity since the Reformation, a 
similar and even better condition ob- 
tains. 

The London Tablet of August 3, 
T901, reports Mr. Balfour as saying in 
Parliament: "I come from a coun- 
try in which education is under popular 
control. It is almost universally relig- 
ious ; and not only that but it is dog- 
matic. It knows nothing of the strange 
compromises which are the subjects of 
debate in the English school boards. 
Frankly under proper control in Scot- 
land are taught the Shorter Catechism 
in the great majority of schools, the 
Anglican Catechism in other schools, 
and Roman Catholic Theology in still 
others. So that we have dogmatic 
theology reconciled with that popular 
control which the right honorable gen- 
tleman desires." Could we ask more 
from bitter old Scotia ? 

What is most convincing is that in 
Germany, which is admittedly the 
greatest Protestant nation of the world 
and which distinguished itself by a re- 
lentless persecution of Catholicity a 
generation ago, the Government not 
only permits but fosters separate schools 
for the various sects of the Empire, 
Catholicity included. 

With them education without relig- 
ion is inconceivable, and the Govern- 
ment insists upon it even against the 
will of the parents ; so much so that in 
a recent case where a Socialist protest- 
ed against religious instruction, the 
court ruled that the child should be 
sent to the school of the denomination 
which the father had left. Laymen are 
trained especially for the work of teach- 
ing catechism, and in the case of Cath- 
olic schools, the priest is generally 
school inspector, and the parish priest 
has the right to enter during school 



i6 



The Only True American School System. 



hours and teach ; which he generally 
does once or twice a week. In the 
several hundred neutral or mixed 
schools, religion is part of the curric- 
ulum. The same holds good for col- 
leges or gymnasia where religious in- 
struction is obligatory. 

What is most curious about it all is 
that during the persecution of the Kul- 
turkampf, while Bismarck was shutting 
up churches and sending bishops and 
priests to exile or prison, the schools 
were not interfered with. Had he done 
so, Catholicity would have been oblit- 
erated from Germany. It was God 
who prevented him, for in such an 
event Germany would not now have 
its staunch Catholic defenders against 
socialism and anarchy. The great Prot- 
estant Empire did not fear to have its 
ruler appoint a Catholic Chancellor who 
was the brother of a Roman Cardinal. 
We broadminded Americans are a long 
distance from that attitude of good sense. 

What do our fellow-countrymen 
want? Religion is indispensable for 
the salvation of the nation. It is not 
taught to the vast majority of the peo- 
ple in the churches. It can be taught 
only in the schools. The most con- 
spicuous men among us, clergy and 
laity alike, of all denominations, demand 
that it must be taught there, or we are 
lost ; and that a religion must be taught 
which is not a composite hodge-podge 
of all religions, viz. : a natural religion 
which has been pronounced by the 
most competent educational authorities 
to be " fatuous, "and after being tried, 
a miserable failure. Lastly, it is beyond 
all question true, that the establishment 
of separate religious schools is feasible ; 
for the most intensely Protestant na- 
tions of the world insist upon them ; 
have no difficulty in adjusting them- 
selves to the diversity of creeds, and 
have found by experience that instead 
of dividing the country the method 
welds it together, by permitting men to 
have their dogmatic differences, while 



at the same time inducing them to make 
their otherwise conflicting sects unite, 
each in its own way, to swell the great 
current of morality, which, precisely 
because it comes from these different 
and distinct sources, reaches, as nothing 
else can, every class and condition of 
society. 

Are we to confess ourselves inferior 
to Germany, England and Scotland in 
practical matters? Are we, perhaps, 
intellectually dull, or have we grown to 
be unfair ; or in spite of the present 
alarming condition of things are we 
losing our senses ? 

We have indeed lost our senses to 
some extent ; but the awful crisis 
through which we are passing has re- 
vealed to us the precipice yawning at 
our feet. As for ability in practical 
matters, we have it to a greater degree 
than other people, and can more easily 
adjust ourselves to circumstances ; 
and lastly, though perhaps misin- 
formed, we are not wilfully unfair. 
It can be safely admitted that if 
these truths are placed squarely be- 
fore the American people, they will 
frankly acknowledge and honestly ad- 
mit them. But this is to be done, not 
by underhand methods, not by dicker- 
ing with politicians who will smile and 
smile, and promise, and then leave us 
on our back as helpless as before, but by 
reiterating our position and compelling 
the people to see that our demand for 
religious education is not prompted by 
any sinister design against our fellow- 
countrymen or their liberties, but by 
an ineradicable conscientious conviction 
which events are proving to be well 
founded, that religion is necessary for- 
the preservation of our country, that it 
must be implanted in the hearts and the 
lives of the growing generation, and 
that there is no other way of doing it 
than by resorting to the rational, feasi- 
ble and the now widely admitted method 
of teaching it in the separate schools of 
the various denominations. 



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